Occupy Wall Street was not too big to fail. The left-wing protest campaign that started with such a media-assisted bang ended with a whimper exactly 2 years ago as New York police evicted protesters from their base of operations in Zuccotti Park. The self-styled movement fizzled out as public and official patience with it wore thin.

The movement had already split into at least two distinct factions. There were the mostly college educated activists and intellectuals who essentially made up the government of the park, and the drifters who slept in the park and relied on donations mostly allocated by the first group for food, clothes and other basic necessities.

FAST FORWARD - WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Through a freedom of information request by Bloomberg News, the public now has access to over 29,000 pages of Fed documents and 21,000 additional Fed transactions that were deliberately hidden, and for good reason. (See here and here.)

These documents show how top government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-’09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms. Here are some of the shocking revelations:

1. REWARDING CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

The big banks and hedge funds were in much more trouble than we were led to believe.

All the big banks were on their knees begging for help – secretly – while telling their investors, the public and Congress that all was well. The entire banking system should have been reorganized from top to bottom. Instead, the colossal "manufactured" failures were secretly rewarded.

2. SECRET FUNDING

Wall Street’ssecret government made sure the largest banks would grow even larger, aided by the secret funding.

While Congress was debating legislation to break up the large banks and reinstitute Glass Steagall (to separate risky investment banking from insured commercial banking,) the secret government was using public funds to grow even larger through mergers and acquisitions. Because Congress and the public were unaware of the secret funding and ill-health of all the banks, the legislation was easily defeated. As the chart below makes painfully clear, too-big-to-fail banks grew even bigger.

3. BUYING GOVERNMENT

The bigger Wall Street becomes, the more government it can buy.

This part isn’t secret. As the top six banks grew larger, they spent more funds lobbying to make sure that they wouldn’t suffer any unprofitable impacts from banking reform legislation. So after the biggest banks received hundreds of billions in secret loans, they upped their lobbying funds to maintain their size and power. Read ‘em and weep:

4. PROTECTING INSIDERS

Treasury Secretary Paulson,the former head of Goldman Sachs riskED attending a secret meeting with giant hedge fund managers, many of whom used to work at Goldman Sachs. How could the nation’s highest ranking financial official dare to tip off these hedge fund elites about the imminent government takeover of Fannie and Freddie before Congress and the public were informed?

Paulson warned his old comrade "insiders" of the impeding nationalization to get them out of harm’s way AND to give them a very profitable tip. Wall Street, and Wall Street alone, took down the economy and killed 8 million jobs in a matter of months.

5. KILLING DEMOCRACY

The Wall Street-induced crash and the government’s response to it is enormous disdain for what remains of our democracy. Congress is bought and paid for by the very banks it pretends to regulate. The rest of us are thefinancially illiterate masses manipulated through the mass media. Our minds are bought and sold through careful marketing. Wall Street couldn’t have written a better script to maintain its domination.

This financial arrogance and corruption is killing our democratic values.
Many Americans no longer trust their government, no longer vote and believe that democracy is a sham.

OCCUPY WALL STREET REVIVAL?

Two years ago, the Wall Street occupiers dramatically attacked Wall Street elites and captured the country’s imagination with their 1 percent VERSUS 99 percent framework. For Americans to reclaim their country from Wall Street’s secret government tentacles, they will need to develop an enormous movement among the 99 percent. Hoping it will happen spontaneously through Twitter and Facebook is false hope. It will require hardcore organizing involving millions.

The question is - When, where and who will do the organizing?

Great concentrations of power and wealth do not give up their power and wealth without an enormous fight including infiltration of movements. Wall Street’s secret government is more than ready to protect itself, even if it means subverting democracy.